


Altar Wine

by EternalLibrary



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Autistic Jon, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Poetry, Wine, that should be a given with my fic but im tagging it just in case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 10:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20406535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EternalLibrary/pseuds/EternalLibrary
Summary: Late night wine and poetry.





	Altar Wine

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on the beautiful David Keenan song [ Altar Wine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT80sioBjHY).  
It takes place [wiggles hand] sometime between when Jon gets back from America and the Unknowing.

It’s late in the evening – or maybe early in the night – when Jon steps into the break room and finds Martin sitting alone at the table. He doesn’t notice Jon, absorbed in whatever he is reading. A mug sits in front of him and the hand not holding the book taps fingers against its side.

Jon watches Martin for a moment, then clears his throat.

“Oh,” Martin looks up distractedly, “hi Jon.”

“Hi,” Jon says. “You’re still here.” It’s half observation, half question. Jon’s not sure he’s put the right inflection on it. He’s so _tired_.

“So are you,” Martin replies and, okay. That’s fair.

“There’s,” says Jon. He doesn’t finish the thought. There’s a lot, he had meant to say but that’s not, that doesn’t mean anything.

“Is the kettle hot?” he says instead.

“Oh, er, no I can…” Martin turns his book upside down, letting the table hold the pages open. Jon supresses a wince.

“Oh, no, I’ve got it,” he says, “I just thought…” he gestures at Martin’s mug as he steps around the table but upon closer inspection it doesn’t contain tea but something deep and red.

Jon stops and tilts his head minutely to one side. “Is that...wine?”

Martin flushes, as though trying to match the shade of his drink. “Er…yeah. I’m sorry I know… I know it’s not. I shouldn’t, at work, it’s just. Erm.”

Jon speaks overtop of him, “No, I don’t, I-I mean, it’s not. It’s nearly 9, you can. It’s your own time, and I can’t. I mean, this isn’t exactly, none of this is a normal work environment so I can’t…”

He’s sure he’s blushing too. Surely, at some point, he’s been able to talk to Martin like a normal. Bloody. Person but...well, in his defence, being accused of murder does tend to strain one’s relationships, he supposes.

“I’m sorry,” Martin says, incongruously.

“It’s fine,” Jon says. “That’s what I meant.” Maybe he’s not being clear. He really is quite tired. “I don’t, er, mind.”

Martin looks like maybe he wants to flee or apologise again but he says, “Do you er – want some? I’ve got a bottle.” Sure enough he lifts a green glass bottle from the floor, as though he’d been trying to hide it behind the leg of a table. The bottle, Jon notices, is over half empty and Jon wonders if martin has drunk all of that just now.

“Do you…” Jon starts. “Do you typically keep wine at work?”

“Er,” says Martin.

“Not important,” Jon decides, although he kind of _would _like to know. “I’d...sure, I’d have some. If that’s. Alright.”

“Of course.” Martin gets another mug out of the cupboard, and Jon sits across the table from him.

"I’m sorry," Martin says, "we don’t have proper glasses…"

Jon raises an eyebrow at him. "I’m sure I’ll manage."

Martin grins weakly, before pouring a healthy portion of wine into the mug.

“I don’t,” he says, “to answer your question, typically keep wine at work it’s just, I was following up on a statement at a er, a vicarage? Is that the word? And the caretaker was very appreciative, which, heh, makes a nice change. But he gave me this and I was going to take it home but...I kind of… got stuck? I guess?”

Jon knows what he means, the inertia the archives seem to exert, like a gravity well dragging them all in. He hums in acknowledgement of Martin’s explanation and picks up the mug.

Jon doesn’t...particularly like wine, and he's sure he would not be voluntarily drinking it if martin hadn’t offered, but he takes a gulp from the mug. Its sourly sweet and makes his mouth feel dry. Yeah. He still doesn’t love wine. He takes another gulp and puts the mug down.

"What ah, what were you reading?" he asks.

"Oh," says Martin, "er, its a Siegfried Sassoon book. He's, he was a war poet."

Martin slides the book across the table so Jon can see the cover. It has what looks like a photo of an oil painting of trees above the title, _The Old Huntsman, And Other Poems_.

"Do you er, do you remember that one statement, it was ages ago now but it was about Wilfred Owen?"

Jon nods. It has been a while, but sometimes Jon feels as though he can recall every statements as well as any cassette tape.

"I, I mean, you read a bit of Owen in school right, but I didn’t know him well, but I looked him up when we were researching that statement. I got a er, a book of war poetry. It has Owen and Sassoon and some other poets. Rupert Brooke. Thomas Hardy." Martin waves a hand, "not important."

Martin has relaxed as he talks, wrapping comfort in his subject matter around him as a shield from any discomfort Jon being here might be causing.

"It turns out that Owen and Sassoon met while they were at the same hospital. They wrote a bit, to each other, when Owen went back to the front."

Martin picks up his phone, pulls something up.

"This is from Owen: _'And you have fixed my Life – however short. You did not light me: I was always a mad comet; but you have fixed me. I spun round you, a satellite, for a month, but I shall swing out soon, a dark star in the orbit where you will blaze._'"

He blushes as he reads, and when he puts the phone down he glances up at Jon, then quickly away, as though not wanting to see Jon’s expression.

“That wasn’t...relevant. Really,” he says. “It’s just. Nice. writing.”

“It is,” says Jon, finding he also can’t quite look Martin in the face. He picks up his mug, discovering somehow that he has drunk nearly all of it. Martin pushes the bottle across to him.

As Jon pours, Martin fiddles with his mug, twisting it back and forth on the tabletop. The sound of it scraping over the surface scores into Jon’s skull and he reaches out to still the mug.

“Sorry,” martin says, barely a whisper. He clears his throat. “Sorry,” he says again.

“It’s okay,” Jon says. “It just…”

“Yeah,” Martin says.

And now they’re back in that awkward silence with Martin staring at the tabletop and Jon feeling as though he’s stuck his foot in his mouth _again_.

Jon drinks his wine for something to do and maybe he’s just getting used to it but it’s not _quite_ as bad as he’d previously thought.

“Sassoon really didn’t want Owen to go back to the front,” Martin says, quietly, speaking to the table. “And when he...er, well, Sassoon was a bit of a mentor to Owen, so he published his work. Owen’s, that is. After he died.”

Jon doesn’t know what to say to that. He knows that what Sassoon and Owen experienced – what Staff Sergeant Clarence Berry experienced – is so beyond anything he could imagine. But he, like Martin, he thinks, can feel the presence of death – of the End – in a way that he hadn’t, back when he had first read Berry’s statement. He thinks of Sasha, and Gerry, Gertrude and even Leitner.

“Could you,” says Jon. Stops. Clears his throat. “Er, would you mind. Reading. Something? From…” he gestures to the book, still held spine-damagingly open. “I mean, if you…”

He can feel his own face heating now, a blush to match Martin’s of earlier.

“Oh,” says Martin, looking up at him. Their eyes meet and Martin blushes and looks away and Jon wishes he hadn’t. He wants to lose himself in Martin’s eyes. “Er, alright.”

He grabs the book. “There are,” he says, flipping to the front of the book, keeping a thumb in his place. “There are war poems, and er, lyrical poems, they’re called.”

He looks up expectantly at a point to the right of Jon’s ear. It takes Jon a moment to realise that he’s asking which type of poem Jon wants to hear.

Jon shakes his head, “Whatever you think.”

Martin furrows his brow back at the pages, running a finger down them as though examining a grocery list. He hums, then flips to near the middle of the book.

“Be-because,” he starts, voice cracking. He takes a drink from his mug. “Sorry,” he says.

Jon gestures the apology away, an action lost on martin, still fixedly staring at the page.

“_Because_,” Martin starts again, “_the night was falling warm and still…_”

As he reads, his voice gets stronger, more sure of itself. It’s as though Jon and the break room and the Institute have all ceased to exist and it’s just Martin and these words, just Martin, wrapping poetry around him like a blanket. Just Martin, who Jon can’t take his eyes off of.

It’s not a short poem, but Martin doesn’t stumble, doesn’t pause for a drink or for breath. It reminds Jon, in a mirror-image kind of way, of reading a statement. Except here the words seem to be buoying Martin rather than draining him, and it’s clear that it is a partnership, Martin’s voice and Sassoon’s poetry blending and rising to a new kind of life. Jon can almost _see_ colours and images conjured by Martin’s reading.

“_And youth_,” Martin finishes, “_that dying, touched my lips to song_.” As he says the last words he raises one hand unconsciously to his face, holds it there for a moment in front of his mouth, and then looks up at Jon.

And it’s Jon’s turn to look away, because there is something _peaceful_ and _right_ about Martin’s expression and all Jon can do is drink down the end of his wine. When he glances, sideways, at martin, he’s still watching him, edge of uncertainty in his eyes.

“Thank you,” says Jon, “that was…” _Beautiful_. 

Martin blushes. “Of-of course,” he says. “Anytime, Jon.”

**Author's Note:**

> All the stuff Martin says about Owen and Sassoon is true. If you wanna learn more about Sassoon I recommend the episode of [History Is Gay](https://www.historyisgaypodcast.com/listen/2018/11/25/episode-19-siegfried-sassoon) about him.  
You can read some of the letters Owen wrote to Sassoon [here](http://rictornorton.co.uk/owen.htm), including the one that Martin quotes from. They're very gay and very beautiful. Poet's shouldn't be allowed to write love letters.  
The poem Martin reads is ["The Last Meeting"](https://www.bartleby.com/135/35.html). It's beautiful, and a tear jerker.  
Finally, I'm on tumblr at [autisticjonsims](https://autisticjonsims.tumblr.com/). Feel free to talk to me about gay-ass poetry or whatever. And as always, comments are my lifeblood.


End file.
